Reverse Geocoding to City API

Introduction

Today, our smart devices can locate our geo-coordinates in real-time and with a high level of accuracy. But, these coordinates are often useless if you cannot identify the locality information such as country/state/city associated with them.

Reverse geocoding is a process which converts latitude and longitude to readable locality properties. Reverse geocoding is an essential component of the modern web, mobile and IoT. Its use cases vary across various industries and applications.  

  • Content Personalisation and Localisation
  • Geotargeting
  • Geofencing
  • Customer data validation
  • Fraud and security threat detection

 

How is BigDataCloud’s Reverse Geocoding API different?

Existing reverse geocoding providers are trying to resolve to the closest street address, a household, for the given coordinates. As a result, the quality of data widely varies for mobile and regional users and exhibits slower response times.

Our Reverse Geocoding API is the first to deliver administrative/non-administrative boundaries-based results. Hence, the API is perfectly suitable for determining locality areas such as a suburb, city, state or country, rather than a street address, resulting much faster response times and excellent support even for less populated areas. 

  • Unprecendly fast response time (sub-millisecond)
  • Delivers Administrative/non-administrative boundaries-based results
  • Provides detailed locality information of a user in 147 common world languages
  • Full postal code level accuracy for the US, Great Britain, and Australia (partial for other countries)

Example Response

The response is only available in JSON format. The below response should be expected for the following request:


https://api.bigdatacloud.net/data/reverse-geocode


Awaiting request submission...

API Pricing

  1. Monthly Subscription
    FREE 50,000 queries/month
    Additional 50,000 queries US$2.00/month
  2. Annual Subscription
    FREE 50,000 queries/month
    Additional 50,000 queries US$1.60/month

Request Format

NEW! Payload compression is supported, simply add Accept-Encoding: gzip header.
Use the form below to try out this API.

Parameter Your Input Value Description
latitude

Latitude value as per WGS 84 reference system (GPS system). Expected values are in [-90, 90] range.
longitude

Longitude value as per WGS 84 reference system (GPS system). Expected values are in [-180, 180] range.
localityLanguage

Preferred language for locality names in ISO 639-1 format, such as 'en' for English, 'es' for Spanish etc. Please note: 147 common world languages are supported, full list here, but not all languages are available for every location. If requested language is not available for a requested location it will default to English, if no English is available, the native, local names will be provided
key Your API key

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If you already have a BigDataCloud account, to automatically fill this field with your Api Key.

The live query

https://api.bigdatacloud.net/data/reverse-geocode


CURL Example

curl -X GET --header 'Accept: application/json' 'https://api.bigdatacloud.net/data/reverse-geocode'


Visit our SDK page to access API clients in specific languages like Javascript, Python + PHP.


Response

Awaiting request submission...

Response Format


Field

Data type

Description

latitude

float

Requested Latitude

longitude

float

Requested Longitude

plusCode

string

Open Location Code (read more here plus codes)

localityLanguageRequested

string

localityLanguage input parameter received

continent

 string

Localised Continent name in the requested language, if available

continentCode

 string

Continent code

countryName

 string

Localised Country name in the requested language, if available

countryCode

 string

Country code as defined by ISO 3166-1 standard

principalSubdivision

 string Localised principal subdivision name in the requested language, if available

principalSubdivisionCode

 string

Principal subdivision code as defined by ISO 3166-2 standard

city

 string Localised city name in the requested language, if available

locality

 string Represents the smallest geographic area recognised to which the target belongs. The language, if available, is as defined by ‘localityLanguage’ request parameter

postcode

 string

Postcode, if available

localityInfo

  <LocalityInfo> object

Detailed reverse geocoded locality information localised to the language as defined by ‘localityLanguage’ request parameter

API Endpoint

Endpoint: /data/reverse-geocode
Full URL: https://api.bigdatacloud.net/data/reverse-geocode

Data Objects

Locality Info object

Field

Data type

Description

administrative

Aray of <LocalityProperty> objects

Administrative boundarires ordered by area (largest first). Omitted if no administrative boundaries are available

informative

Aray of <LocalityProperty> objects

Non-administrative boundarires ordered by area (largest first). Omitted if not available

Locality Property object

Field

Data type

Description

order

integer

Order value consistent across all entities in the Locality Info parent object. Ordered by geographic area (largest first)

adminLevel

integer

An administrative level as defined by OpenStreetMaps project

name

string

Localised name of the place in the requested language, if available. The language is as defined by ‘localityLanguage’ request parameter

description

string

Localised description of the place in the requested language, if available. The language is as defined by ‘localityLanguage’ request parameter

isoName

string

ISO 3166-2 standard name, if available

isoCode

string

ISO 3166-2 standard code, if available

wikidataId

string

Wikidata item identifier, if available

geonameId

integer

Unique identifier given by GeoNames.org

chinaAdminCode

string

China Administrative division code. This is available only for locations based in China, and is omitted for others.

 

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